


The life and times of Missy Dawson

by AroAceMess



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Canon Compliant, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Domestic Violence, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Mother-Son Relationship, Other, Pre-Call Down the Hawk, Pre-Canon, Pynch is very very minor, Teen Pregnancy, and all the other shitty stuff Robert Parrish does, i haven’t read it yet, probably, trigger warning for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:34:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24973909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AroAceMess/pseuds/AroAceMess
Summary: She’d had a happy childhood, it felt like a far off dream land now, in a little house with a yard and a broken swing set. Her clothes were never new and her shoes were always scuffed but they had enough money to drive to the beach every year for two whole weeks so it was enough.Robbie Parrish is the boy next door, handsome with a swagger to match. She loves him like a dumpster fire, hot and toxic. She never wanted to be a mama she wanted to be a nurse, God didn’t smile on high schoolers who didn’t go to class with babies on their hips and no rings on their fingers.
Relationships: Adam Parrish & Mrs. Parrish, Adam Parrish & Robert Parrish, Mrs. Parrish/Robert Parrish, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 4
Kudos: 50





	The life and times of Missy Dawson

**Author's Note:**

> In case you didn’t see the massive trigger warnings in the tags I’ll put them here again massive massive warnings for abuse child abuse domestic violence emotional manipulation and neglect. I rated it mature for the abuse just in case 
> 
> I haven’t read call down the hawk yet and it’s been over a year since I’ve read any of the books so apologies if there are any inconsistencies but i tried to keep it as canon adjacent as possible. 
> 
> It’s been over a year since I started writing this so I cannot for the life of me remember where I got missy’s name from but nevertheless I hope you enjoy

When she looks back on her youth it’s backlight with honey gold light and the promise of a future she would never have. She was born to a mother of 26 and a father of 28 and a brother of 2, mr and mrs Dawson and their son Charlie good people and better Christians. They lived in the South and looked the part, dirt brown hair year round tan squeaky clean image. A perfect family father mother brother sister, a unit. 

She goes to church every Sunday says her prayers and gets her blessings in a pretty little sundress that was once a cousins or maybe just some other girl from the town. Henrietta is large and tiny and everyone knows everyone knows everyone. All her clothes are nearly new and hand me downs and all her shoes are worn and dirt scuffed, she doesn’t care. 

She starts school when she’s 5, all the other little girls and the mommies and the teachers tell her how pretty blue her eyes are and how pretty her little face is and her little dresses are; she feeds off the praise like it’s her lifeblood. She’s the prettiest girl in her class the other kids tell her and they flock around her like she’s the best thing since sliced bread and oh how she loves there attention. 

On her sixth birthday the house is packed with her friends and she opens lots of presents and her mama says ‘oh look how popular my little missy is, you’re gonna break hearts one day angel’ and she looks so proud and it makes her grin so wide the other mamas melt a little and coo and pinch her little six year old cheeks. 

Robbie moves in next door the summer when she’s 7 and he’s 9, she marches right up to him and declares ‘you are the most handsomest guy ever and I’m the most prettiest girl in school, we should be friends.’ He’s nine so accepts this logic without question and they spend the majority of the summer lazing about on her half broken swing set as late as possible so Robbie doesn’t have to go home. 

Her daddy is strict, Robbie’s daddy is a monster. 

He’s ten and she’s eight and he’s in her garden and lifts up his shirt to show her the splotches of purple bruising across his ribs. ‘You don’t tell no one missy, they will take my daddy away and me and my mama won’t have no body to take care of us.’ She zips her lips and throws away the key, she doesn’t tell no one ever. 

She has her first kiss at 12, kind of not really, it’s the last day of summer she’s off to grade 7 and robbie’s off to his first day at high school and when he walks her home and says goodnight he kisses her cheek quick as anything before booking it down the street yelling ‘goodbye miss missy’ over his shoulder. She fans her face and swoons, Robbie is pretty and Robbie is cool and Robbie kissed her like grown ups do. She really likes Robbie. 

Robbie and her brother fall in together at school, become great friends even. This is both a blessing and a curse. For one Robbie is round their house all the time to see her brother which means she gets to see him, but it also means that Robbie can’t kiss her cheek or hold her hands without her brother seeing and breaking his nose. she loves Charlie but damn if he isn’t over protective all the time. 

They don’t officially start dating until she’s 15 and he’s 17. It’s the talk of the school, pretty missy Dawson and Robbie Parrish are an item, they look good together strolling down the halls of their high school him driving her anywhere in his battered old pick up her making sure he doesn’t fail calculus and kissing him sweetly on the cheek at her locker before class. He even meets her family proper, shakes her daddy’s hand and calls him sir and nearly charms the skirt off her mother. They give their enthusiastic blessing to the relationship and welcome him into their home, even her brother isn’t too fussed doesn’t even threaten him once. 

For her 16th birthday she sneaks out the house at 6am under the pretence of spending the whole day with her girls and staying over and jumps in robbies pick up for the long drive to DC. They eat dinner in a almost fancy french restaurant in their best clothes and go walking in the shop light bright streets for ages. They fall into bed at the shitty little back street hotel Robbie can just about afford and that is where her idillic childhood dies, missy Dawson has sex. 

She doesn’t realise anything is wrong until the next month when she skips her period, and then the next, and the next. At that point she’s downright anxious, runs round to robbies house and asks him to drive her to the drug store out of town so no one will recognise her and buy her a box of the little plastic sticks that could end her life. Robbies graduated and works as a builder now but she’s still got two years of high school left and dreams of becoming a nurse that will not be realised if the outcome is what she thinks it is. 

The test is positive, her honey gold world crashes down in an instant. 

She tells her parents and her daddy screams so loud she’s scared of him for the first time ever and her mommy looks so disappointed and so disgusted that her daughter her lovely missy would do this. They tell her she isn’t their daughter, isn’t the good god fearing girl they raised and that she has a week to be packed up and out of their house because she’s no longer part of this family. 

She cries and cries and cries, Robbie uses the little money he has set aside to buy up an old trailer and she drops out of school. The trailer is tiny and musty and decorated like a scene straight out of the 80s but it’s theirs and it’ll have to do. 

It storms on the day her son is born, it’s July 3rd the height of summer and they haven’t seen hide nor hair of rain in weeks but yet on this day the heavens open and lightning flashes as she brings her son into the world. She holds this red faced screaming thing she brought into the world and names him Adam, she loves him like any mother loves their child but somewhere deep down she feels the slightest seed of resentment start to grow and it scares her. 

Things are fine for a few years, she turns 18 Robbie turns 20 and Adam turns 2 and they can finally get married in some little no questions asked roadside chapel and she takes her GED as Mrs Missy Parrish. And life is fine and it’s fine and it’s fine. They’re dirt poor and all their clothes are thrifted and donated and stolen and all their food is bargain bin and reduced and food stamped and stolen but they’re happy. And then it all changes. 

Adam is 7 and too smart for his own good she’s 23 and aimless and robbies 25 and still a builder. Then he shatters his knees in a car crash and is told he’ll never work on a construction site ever again, it’s not a work accident so they can’t sue the company and he crashes into a tree because of an icy road so there’s no person to sue to get money so they’re fucked. He’s not qualified for any other job and she’s got no practical life skills outside of raising a child so they go onto benefits and Robbie starts drinking. He drinks and he drinks until Robbie stops being Robbie and starts being Robert. 

Robert is vicious Robert is mean Robert does things to her and Adam that robbies parents did to him in her honey coloured past. She still loves him though, still loves all the parts of him that were her Robbie - sometimes it’s almost like robbies still there for a fleeting moment but Robert always comes back. It’s goes on and on until covering up for him is an instinct and not an effort until putting her dollar tree concealer on her 10 year old sons bruises is just a matter of principle until facing her sobbing boy and saying ‘daddy doesn’t mean it, you know that’ is just nature until telling the cops ‘no officer it’s all just a misunderstanding, just another case of boys crying wolf’ is expected. After all, where else does she have to go? Who else does she have? 

It hits her really when she’s 31, all grown up now, and her son is 15 and they’re sat in the bathroom together him dabbing alcohol on a cut from a broken bottle that she doesn’t know her own boy. His actions are cold and detached and hers even more so, she doesn’t hate him (not yet) but she looks at him and none of that love and warmth that bloomed in her chest when he was little remains. She looks on this man before her dabbing away at the evidence of Roberts anger who looks like her reflection and she doesn’t know a single thing about him. She says ‘ravioli for dinner’ and he hums. 

After this strange inflection point she finds herself obsessing over him and herself and their similarities. It really is striking how much they look alike, same dirt brown hair same too sharp cheekbones same cool blue eyes same flat nose same drooping mouth same delicate hands with spindly fingers same too skinny build from inadequate meals same hunched over invisible stance. It’s even stranger how little they have in common, her son is self sufficient and too smart he has dreams of leaving and friends who pick him up at the top of the road but are never allowed to get close to their home he has a fire inside their cool blue eyes that she lost years and years ago now and she sort of resents him for holding onto his fire with what little strength his father allows him to keep. 

He’s 16 and she’s 32 and Roberts out at the night shift janitorial job he’s managed to swing himself this month so they’re eating a dinner of tinned ravioli together in silence when apropos of nothing he blurts out ‘I got the partial scholarship.’ She ignores him and carries on eating ‘to Aglionby, and I got another job so y’all don’t have to worry about making up the rest.’ She feels an irrational anger building in her ‘might even have enough left over to help out round here.’ She lets out a huff of air anger building ‘eat your pasta’ he does. 

Later when he’s asleep she hiccups angry tears into her pillow, how dare he suggest that they can’t take care of their own how dare he suggest that the education she’s been fighting tooth and nail against Robert for him to have is somehow lacking how dare he suggest that going to a rich boy fancy school will change him in any way. She feels that small hatred for her son grow and grow. 

He’s 17 now and cocky, his rich boy friends have been putting ideas into his head all his father asked for was for him to not flaunt his fancy lifestyle around them but he brings home his fancy textbooks and his fancy uniform and his fancy friends come in their fancy cars to pick him up and she hates him for it hates that he gets this beautiful life from the smouldering wreck that is hers. She was supposed to be a nurse! 

There’s a second turning point in their relationship that really turns it from cold indifference to seething true hatred. Robert finds a pay stub on the floor of Adams room, totally innocent pay stub that Adam uses to pay for his fancy rich boy school except the numbers don’t add up. If this really is what he makes with every pay check then he makes decently over what he needs to pay for the other half of his tuition and Robert goes ballistic. He’s swearing up a storm ranting about ungrateful children with no respect for their fathers. He has already broken a plate and a cup by the time Adams shark of a friend’s too sleek bmw comes tearing up outside to drop him off. 

It’s all a blur from there Robert strikes Adam so hard he falls back into a metal railing with a horrific cracking noise and before Robert can go in and kick his exposed belly the shark boy is whirling on him all heavy boots and enraged yell hitting Robert hard enough for him to bowl over backwards. Then the police are there and shark boy is cuffed and so is her Robert and she’s gripping at her sons arm tears in her eyes pleading him to not tell the officers to let them handle this as a family like always but instead he turns to the officer and airs their dirty laundry to save his rich boy friend. 

She goes to the trial, vehemently refuses to testify or add domestic violence charges to the bill insisting Roberts a good man deep down and that he just lost his temper, and watches as her son and his rich boy friends talk about Robert. She’s in her lilac best church dress and little white heels and lacy gloves that were her mothers that she snagged when she left all those years ago and she can feel every eye in the courtroom on her as her son talks about his father hitting him and how she told him never to go to the police because these were family matters. In her head they still are. 

By the end of his testimony two of the jurors have tears in their eyes and the rest look too sympathetic to be comfortable. They pronounce him guilty and he’s sentenced to ten years with the possibility for parole after five served and handed a bone crushing $50,000 fine on top of all of that. She stops him on the steps of the courthouse grabs his arm and hisses out pure hatred in her voice ‘this was unnecessary’ he looks at her dead eyed and says ‘you know it was’ she lets go of him like he’s hot coals and says ‘I’ve got no one now’ and leaves him on those steps with the shark boy. 

Robert gets let out after five served but gets himself thrown back in on assault charges not a year after he gets released and she can see this becoming a pattern, so she gets herself a job cleaning some big fancy office building a ways drive out of Henrietta that makes her think of Adam even though she hasn’t thought about her son once in eight long long years. 

A while later an article comes up in their local paper about a home grown Henrietta boy called Adam Parrish now some big hot shot lawyer in New York City marrying another home grown Henrietta boy called ronan lynch, he’s 26 now all grown up and successful and rich everything she could’ve been. She’s sets the article on fire with her zippo and puts out the ashes in her coffee and vows to never think about him or her past ever again. 

And she doesn’t.

**Author's Note:**

> Remember if your are being abused or have been abused in the past it is never your fault and always the abusers and if your not in a place where it’s safe to reach out then that’s ok but know that if/when you do you will be listened to and helped by anyone with a shred of compassion. 
> 
> Have a great day/night and stay safe in these trying times xx
> 
> Hit me up here [@aro-ace-mess](https://aro-ace-mess.tumblr.com/)


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